Injuries in health care workers during patient and decedent handling
January 20, 2023
1-2 p.m. in Hallie Ford Center room 115
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Dr. Maikala will be presenting on how injuries in the healthcare industry continue to rise more than in any other industries. Although various interventions are developed to mitigate injuries to caregivers through strategies such as providing safe patient-handling equipment, policies, and legislation, caregivers are still being injured. Dr. Maikala will address challenges and discuss opportunities for injury prevention in the healthcare industry.
Ram Maikala, PhD, ASP
Program Technical Consultant, Musculoskeletal Disorders
Solutions Laboratory Thought Leadership, National Safety Council
Maikala is a Subject Matter Expert-Program Technical Consultant with the National Safety Council. Dr. Maikala earned a BE in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University, India; an MS in Industrial Engineering with special emphasis on Ergonomics and Safety Engineering from West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia; and a PhD in Rehabilitation Science from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
He recently worked as an Injury Prevention and Ergonomics Program Specialist at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. At Providence, Dr. Maikala taught and trained safe patient handling and mobility to hospital staff, developed and provided ergonomics and safety risk assessments of the hospital and clinical environments, and developed interventions to mitigate injuries. For almost two decades, his research focused on work physiology and human performance using various non-invasive physiological modalities, including Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS); this effort, in turn, led to the first peer-reviewed special issue on Applications of NIRS in Ergonomics and Exercise-related research.